Tulips analysis

Thematic concerns

• Nature
• Self/Identity
• Memory
• Tulips

Form & Structure

• 7 line stanzas with one 14 line - give external implications of stability and order - paragraph about tulips obviously unbalancing her sense of order (14 line stanza)
• Free Verse - internally there is a lack of control
• End-stopped stanzas implies a sense of clarity that Plath rarely expresses
• Chronology to the poem - starts with a sense of order that is then disrupted by the tulips
• Title is misleading as it gives connotations of spring/new life
• Ends on ambiguos sentence - semantic field of cleansing…